Remove the tenderloin from the marinade and cover it thoroughly first with the black pepper, then the white pepper. In a skillet on the stove or on a hot outdoor grill, sear the meat several seconds on every side over high heat.
Split the marinade into two equal portions. Boil one half, add the oil, and use the mixture as a mop sauce, applying it to the meat every 15 to 20 minutes during the smoking process. Reserve the remaining marinade for a reduction sauce to serve with the tenderloin.
Place the meat in the pit and cook it at 180° F to 220° F until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 140° F, approximately 1½ to 2 hours. (Be careful not to overcook; tenderloin is always best rare to medium-rare. Use an instant-registering meat thermometer to check for doneness.) Remove the tenderloin from the pit and let it sit 15 minutes before slicing.
In the meantime, put the unused portion of marinade in a small, heavy saucepan, bring it to a boil, and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes until the marinade is reduced by one-fourth. Slice the tenderloin, and serve it with the sauce on the side.
Prime-Plus Short Ribs
When we see smoked prime rib on a restaurant menu, we always suspect the kitchen is more interested in its profit margin than its cooking. The best beef rib for slow smoking is the ugly, fatty short rib from the plate section, a cheap cut often made into stew meat.
5
to
6 pounds beef short ribs
1 cup Lone Star Dry Rub ([>])
Bowl of Beer Mop Sauce for Meat ([>])
GLAZE AND BARBECUE SAUCE
½ cups ketchup
1 cup beer
¾ cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons minced cilantro
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1½ teaspoons anise seeds, toasted and ground
1½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon Tabasco or other hot pepper sauce
Serves 6
Massage each short rib with the dry rub. Place the ribs in a plastic trash bag, and put them in the refrigerator overnight.
The next day mix the mop sauce and prepare the pit for smoking. Place the ribs in the pit, fatty side up, and cook them between 200° F and 220° F for 5 hours. Until the last hour, baste with the mop sauce every 30 to 60 minutes.
While the ribs are smoking, prepare the glaze so it is ready to apply approximately 45 minutes before the meat is done. Mix the glaze ingredients in a saucepan, and bring them to a simmer, stirring frequently. Cook the mixture for 30 minutes.
Mop the glaze on the top and sides of the ribs twice during the last 30 to 60 minutes of cooking time. (Never apply glaze before the last hour or it will burn.) Return the remaining glaze to the stove, and simmer it until it's reduced by one-third, about 15 to 20 minutes.
After removing the ribs from the pit, allow them to sit 10 minutes, and then trim the fat. Serve them with the reduced glaze on the side.
* * *
Pit Pointer
We always barbecue more than we intend to eat that day. Most smoked food freezes well and can be reheated in a conventional oven without losing much of the original taste.
* * *
Texas Dry Ribs
In some parts of the country, particularly Memphis and Kansas City, pork spareribs are synonymous with barbecue. Texas barbecue joints tend to look at ribs differently, as something in a separate and lower culinary class from the main specialty. The sign out front might say something like "Wild Willie's BAR-B-Q and Ribs."
We smoke these spareribs Texas style, like brisket, and serve them in one of the popular Memphis manners, "dry," or without a glaze sauce. Make sure that you get thirteen-bone slabs of spareribs, instead of country or loin ribs, and that the chine bone is removed. The preferred size for barbecuing is "3 and down," meaning 3 pounds or smaller, a variable that depends on the weight of the pig when butchered. Don't fret if all you can find are larger slabs, but do smoke them a little longer, about 1 hour more for each extra pound.
⅓ cup ground black pepper
3 full slabs pork spareribs, "St. Louis cut" (trimmed of the chine bone and brisket flap), preferably 3 pounds each or less
⅔ cup Lone Star Dry Rub ([>])
Bowl of Beer Mop Sauce for Meat ([>])
Serves 6
Apply the pepper evenly over the ribs, and then do the same with the dry rub. Place the slabs in a plastic trash bag, and put them in the refrigerator overnight.
The next day mix the mop sauce and prepare the pit for smoking. Cook the slabs between 200° F and 220° F until you can feel them crack a bit between the ribs when you bend the slabs with a gloved hand, approximately 3½ to 4 hours. Every 30 minutes baste both sides and turn them over. Allow the slabs to sit 10 minutes before slicing them into individual ribs.
* * *
One of the few objections people raise to real barbecue is that it takes too long. Makes you wonder how those folks approach sex, baseball, and Larry McMurtry novels.
* * *
Bourbon-Glazed Ribs
This is our favorite "wet" spareribs recipe, finished at the end with a glaze that also serves as a barbecue sauce. Select spareribs using the same criteria described in the preceding recipe for Texas Dry Ribs.
⅓ cup ground black pepper
3 full slabs pork spareribs, "St. Louis cut" (trimmed of the chine bone and brisket flap), preferably 3 pounds each or less
⅔ cup Lone Star Dry Rub ([>])
Bowl of Beer Mop Sauce for Meat ([>])
GLAZE AND BARBECUE SAUCE
¼ cup unsalted butter
¼ cup oil, preferably canola or corn
2 medium onions, minced
⅔ cup bourbon
⅔ cup ketchup
½ cup cider vinegar
½ cup fresh orange juice
½ cup maple syrup
⅓ cup unsulphured dark molasses
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon coarse-ground black pepper
½ teaspoon salt
Serves 6
Apply the pepper evenly over the ribs, and then do the same with the dry rub. Place the slabs in a plastic trash bag, and put them in the refrigerator overnight.
The next day mix the mop sauce and prepare the pit for smoking. Cook the slabs at about 200° F to 220° F until you can feel them crack a bit between the ribs when you bend the slabs with a gloved hand, approximately 3½ to 4 hours. Until the last hour of cooking, baste both sides with the mop sauce and turn the ribs over every 30 minutes.
While the slabs are smoking, prepare the glaze so it is ready to apply approximately 45 minutes before the meat is done. Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the oil, and cook 2 minutes over medium heat. Add the onions, and sauté for several minutes, until they begin to turn golden. Add the remaining glaze ingredients, and bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring frequently. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the mixture thickens, approximately 40 minutes.
During the last 30 to 60 minutes of smoking time, mop the glaze on the ribs twice. (Never apply it before the last hour or the glaze will burn.) Return the remaining glaze to the stove, and simmer it until reduced by one-third, about 15 to 20 minutes.
After removing the slabs from the pit, allow them to sit 10 minutes before slicing them into individual ribs. Serve them with the reduced glaze on the side.
Ranch-Style Fajitas
Mexican ranchers and vaqueros in southwest Texas were some of the first pitmasters in the state. They learned early how to barbecue the least savory parts of the tough, stringy longhorns that once roamed freely in the region. Their major specialty in the past was a whole cow's head, often cooked overnight in an underground pit. That dish never caught on in Dallas, but another brush-country favorite has become the state-wide rage in recent decades. Jajita, or skirt steak, is the diaphragm muscle, once about as popular amon
g suburbanites as a buzzard in the backyard. The term is frequently misused today to refer to almost any kind of grilled meat rolled in a flour tortilla, but the only true fajitas are made with beef skirt
MARINADE
12 ounces beer
1 cup oil, preferably canola or corn
½ medium onion, sliced
Juice of 2 limes
4
to
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 bay leaf
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon chili powder, preferably homemade ([>]) or Gebhardt's
1 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
1 teaspoon crushed chiltepins or chiles pequíns
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and ground
2- to 3-pound whole beef skirt, trimmed of fat and membrane
Warm flour tortillas
Pico de Gallo ([>]) or your favorite salsa
Serves 6 to 8
Combine the marinade ingredients, and marinate the skirt in the mixture overnight in the refrigerator, turning it occasionally. Remove the meat from the refrigerator, and bring it to room temperature about the time you start a fire in the pit.
When the temperature reaches a steady level of 180° F to 220° F, place the skirt in the pit.
Boil the remaining marinade and baste the meat with it every 15 minutes. Smoke the skirt at 180° F to 220° F until it is almost done, approximately 1 hour.
If your pit has a grill area for cooking directly over the fire, move the meat there and sear it 1 to 2 minutes per side. This step, which can also be done on a charcoal grill, adds a pleasant crunchy texture, but isn't necessary for flavor. If you don't want to bother, smoke the meat a little longer until it is completely done.
Allow the skirt to sit for 10 minutes, and then slice it thin diagonally against the grain. Serve the meat on preheated flour tortillas with Pico de Gallo or another spicy sauce. If you want to be literal, this is a taco defqjitas, but most Texans know it simply by the name of the meat itself.
* * *
While Lyndon Johnson was president, another Texan, named Bobby Seale, was leading the Black Panther Party's opposition to the government. About the only thing the two men agreed on was barbecue. Years later, in 1988, Seale wrote a tribute to the "Q" he loved at his uncle's restaurant in Liberty, Texas, and showed how to duplicate it on a grill using marinades flavored with liquid smoke. Anyone determined to get barbecue taste off a covered grill should check out his book, Barbeque'n with Bobby.
* * *
PJ's Cheeky Chicken
We got this recipe from Wayne Whitworth, manufacturer of Pitt's and Spitt's pits, and named it for his delightful wife PJ. In barbecue cook-offs, she's been known to enter this standing-tall chicken with the wings raised to salute the judges. That probably doesn't hurt her chances, but she needs no trick to win. PJ's chicken makes all the rest taste like crowed-out roosters.
2 3- to 4-pound whole chickens
1 cup oil, preferably canola or corn
1 cup Lone Star Dry Rub ([>])
INJECTION SAUCE
2 12-ounce cans or bottles beer
½ cup oil, preferably canola or corn
½ cup vinegar, preferably cider or white
2 teaspoons Lone Star Dry Rub
Mop Sauce
Remaining injection sauce
1 cup unsalted chicken stock
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon prepared jalapeño or yellow mustard
1 tablespoon lone star dry rub
2 12-ounce cans beer (bottles won't do this time)
Serves 4
Remove the organs from the cavity of the chickens. Massage the chickens thoroughly with oil, inside and out, and then cover them well with the dry rub. Work the oil and dry rub as far as possible under the skin without tearing it.
In a bowl, combine the ingredients for the injection sauce. With a kitchen syringe, inject the liquid deep into the breast and legs of each chicken in several spots; use ¼ to ½ cup in total. Add the mop sauce ingredients to the remaining liquid, and mix thoroughly.
Place the chickens in a plastic trash bag, and put them in the refrigerator to sit for at least 3 hours or overnight. Near the end of this time, stoke up the pit and bring the temperature to 220° F. While you wait, open the two beer cans and drink half—and only half—of each beer.
When you're ready to start smoking, remove the tops of the half-empty beer cans and fill them with some of the remaining injection and mop sauce. Take the chickens from the refrigerator, and insert the replenished beer cans into their cavities, balancing the birds so that they rest upright with their legs bent forward. The cans should sit flat on the pit grill, holding the chickens at attention while their insides are steaming and their outsides are smoking.
Cook the chickens for 3½ to 4 hours at 200° F to 220° F, mopping them with the remaining sauce every 20 minutes. When they are done their legs will move freely.
Variation: If you aren't willing to share your beer with the chickens, then stuff their cavity with quartered lemons and onions.
* * *
PJ and Wayne got married in style—real barbecue style. They were hitched between two pits at the barbecue cook-off at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and they celebrated the blessed event afterwards by serving "Q" to a thousand witnesses. The wedding cake was tiered layers of jalapeño cornbread topped with a Velveeta cheese frosting.
* * *
* * *
Smoking food in a pit requires more time than grilling it, but not as much close supervision. You have to be alert to flare-ups when grilling, and constantly mindful of not overcooking. With a pit you add wood every hour or so, check the temperature twice in the same period, and mop your vittles as needed. The separation of the meat and the flame prevents flare-ups, and the slow cooking keeps you from turning your dinner into coal.
* * *
Chicken's Little Livers
The livers that come in the cavity of a whole supermarket chicken can be smoked right along with the bird. When we have only a few, we nibble them as we cook, but sometimes we buy extras and serve them as appetizers.
MARINADE
¼ cup fruit-flavored vinegar
¼ cup unsalted chicken stock
¼ cup oil, preferably canola or corn
⅓ medium onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ teaspoon powdered ginger
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
12 chicken livers, trimmed of any membrane
4 slices slab bacon, sliced in thirds
Makes 1 dozen
Combine all the marinade ingredients in a lidded jar, and shake well. Prepare the pit for smoking, and bring the temperature to 200° F to 220° F.
Place the chicken livers in a shallow nonreactive bowl. Pour enough marinade over the livers just to cover them. Marinate them at room temperature for 30 minutes, or in the refrigerator for 1½ to 2 hours. Reserve the remaining marinade.
Drain the livers. Wrap each liver with a piece of bacon, and secure the bacon with a toothpick. In a small saucepan, bring the reserved marinade to a boil, and remove it from the heat to use as a mop sauce.
Place the livers in the pit on a small grill rack, and smoke them at an average temperature of 200° F to 220° F for about 40 minutes, until the bacon is crisp. Apply the mop sauce several times during the cooking process.
* * *
Pit Pointer
If you're planning to cook bite-size tidbits or fish in your smoker or on the grill, it's worth investing in a portable grill rack with a small mesh and fireproof handles. You'll be able to lay out and remove all of your morsels in one quick step. Griffo Grill and Oscarware make models widely distributed in the United States.
* * *
Garlic-Spiced Turkey Breast
Smoking a full turkey makes for a very long day at the pit, but a breast can be cooked in less than half the time. The trick is
keeping the bird juicy, which this method does.
INJECTION SAUCE
½ cup garlic oil
½ teaspoon cayenne
15-pound turkey breast
RUB
Remaining injection sauce
1 tablespoon fresh-ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
MOP SAUCE
3 cups unsalted turkey or chicken stock
⅓ cup garlic oil
1 tablespoon fresh-ground black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne
Serves 8
For the injection sauce, mix the garlic oil and cayenne in a small bowl. With a kitchen syringe, inject the mixture deep into the turkey breast in a half-dozen places, moving the needle around in each spot to shoot the liquid in several directions.
To make the rub, add the black pepper and salt to the remaining injection sauce, and mix thoroughly. Massage the turkey breast with the rub, working it as far as possible under the skin without tearing it. Place the turkey breast in a plastic trash bag, and put it in the refrigerator to sit overnight.
Texas Home Cooking Page 4